


Abandoned Fear

by Sun_Spark



Series: Numb3rs: Colby & David & Demi-Asexual Shenanigans [3]
Category: Numb3rs (TV)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Asexual Character, Colby sings, Comfort, Comforting David Sinclair, Cuddling & Snuggling, David and Colby are the main characters, DemiAce Colby Granger, Demisexual Character, Depression, Doubt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Hurt Colby Granger, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Happy Ending, Love, M/M, No Sex, No Smut, Post- Trust Metric, Post-Janus List, The team/family is mentioned in passing, Trust, reassurance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:47:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26228926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sun_Spark/pseuds/Sun_Spark
Summary: Three years after the Chinese Spy incident and the momentary death of Colby Granger on the freighter at sea, he and David have mended their relationship as partners in work and life alike. On their quieter days, they lay cuddled together in rest, valuing the time together with their lover - David reads, Colby looks at art and sometimes even sings. It's peaceful. But all the trauma that Colby has lived through, before, during, and after his time in prison, on the run, and on the freighter didn't just go away, and sometimes it comes to the surface like a wave intent on drowning him. When that happens, David takes care of him.
Relationships: Colby Granger/David Sinclair
Series: Numb3rs: Colby & David & Demi-Asexual Shenanigans [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985776
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	Abandoned Fear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dont_be_hasty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dont_be_hasty/gifts).



> Gift for dont_be_hasty - The two ESSAYS I got on my other Numb3rs fics made me pull this WIP up as soon as possible and finishing my editing. It's being posted far ahead of when planned, and that is their fault (thank you <3). Thank you to everyone else who has left me comments, they have been happiness and motivation to write <3.
> 
> Keep these terms in mind: (Also at the end if you don't want spoilers)
> 
> Mo Ghrá – My love  
> A chroí – My heart  
> A ghrá mo chroí – My heart’s beloved  
> Mo Cuishle (pronounced ‘coosh-la’): Literally means ‘my pulse’, for the person who makes your heart beat.  
> (Disclaimer - I do not speak Irish)

It wasn’t a particularly interesting Saturday, the last case they’d had – a double homicide and suicide when a jealous ‘friend’ had killed his lover and his wife and then himself – had been brought to its disturbing and gory completion and the paperwork had been filed by Friday afternoon. Now, unless an emergency came up, they didn’t have work until Monday. Something almost always came up, but for now, Colby and David were taking advantage of the brief calm and not leaving their shared apartment. They could have done a lot of things that day, but they’d allowed themselves to sleep in for once and had merely done some housework that they’d been neglecting due to their hectic schedule. By three in the afternoon they were lying in bed again, not asleep or _playing_ , but resting.

They made a point to do this when they could, laying down and curling up with one another however they were comfortable. Maybe they would read, or scroll through their phones, or sometimes they would just lay there and enjoy the calm silence that was so rare. They’d started this habit a few months after Colby had come back from what they not so fondly referred to as _‘The Chinese Thing’_. They’d been together before Colby’s assignment as a triple agent and subsequent arrest for being a ‘double agent’ had come to light, but for those first six months they’d been dancing around one another and the year and a half since they’d been together before their world was inverted they hadn’t done this. It hadn’t been immediate, this habit, their reunion as coworkers and friends, much less as _**partners**_ had been rough, and for a bit there they hadn’t been sure if they’d be more than coworkers ever again, if they’d even be functional as that. But two months after Colby’s return and several conversations and confrontations that had been painful for _**both,**_ of them, they had either realized or decided that their relationship had been far from casual, and they didn’t want to let it go. After all, why would it have hurt to try if love hadn’t been involved? Through pain and tears and panic attacks and the painstaking regrowth of trust, they had healed. 

It had been two years since then, would be three in a few months. They knew now that David was a caretaker by nature, and that Colby relied heavily on physical affection, and- Demisexual as he was- that it often took the form of things like cuddling rather than sex. For nearly that entire time, as a result of not-quite-cheating and more pain and miscommunication and feelings of neglect in those first few months, they’d had this habit. 

Today David was laying back against the pillows some barely interesting book in hand, and Colby was on his side, back pressed against the other’s hip and side, with his head resting on the other man’s shoulder. Of all the stupidly ridiculous things he was scrolling through some weird app with videos of art and cosplay and music. David had asked him about it once and Colby embarrassedly shrugged, told him he liked the art and the communities that told stories with their characters and music. David had learned a few things that day, firstly that his partner enjoyed groups called ‘fandoms’ and the intricate stories and characters and art they made for their chosen show or movie or books, but he had also learned that Colby loved stories, more than almost anything else in the world. Lastly, he’d learned that his partner usually hid those interests and that intense love of stories from other people, even family and loved ones, for fear of ridicule. It put a sour pit in David’s stomach to think that someone had made Colby feel that way at some point in his life, to an extent that he would hide something he loved from the world. It had taken almost six months of David asking him about the books he was reading or the shows he was watching or the fan-works he liked before Colby seemed to understand that he didn’t have to hide it or be embarrassed, that his happiness only made David feel content and happy and unbearably fond and in love with him. 

Colby didn’t hide it anymore, not from him at least, and those months of gentle reassurance lead to now, with David leaning against the pillows, book in hand, and Colby laying on his side, pressed close to his partner, scrolling through cosplay and art videos without a care in the world. David could never imagine wanting to interact with the chaos of that app or its communities, but Colby often absentmindedly hummed or quietly sang the songs that filtered through the one headphone he kept in, the other absent in case his partner spoke to him, and David loved to hear him sing. These moments of unconscious sound, born of calm and contentedness and silent love expressed by laying close together, were almost the only times he sang. Truth was he didn’t like singing in front of people, or even where he could be heard, was so insecure about it that his voice often froze up and wouldn’t let him sing or even speak. It hurt David’s heart, and he wished to god he could go back in time, to whoever had told a child they couldn’t sing, whose words made choking anxiety bloom in a grown man’s chest and strangle his voice, and punch them. When he thought he was alone, or in moments like this when he felt safe enough that his anxiety wasn’t screaming at him, Colby’s voice easily flowed over the notes both high and low, reaching into the sky to caress the stars in a breath and burrowing twisting roots deep beneath the ground with the next, vibrato building his voice until it filled the air and covered everything in beauty. As long as he didn’t have to hold an alto note and he didn’t have an audience and he felt safe, no siren could have competed with the songs he sang, voice weaving around the notes like water sliding over the rocks to fill a boundless riverbed. Not to David, at least, but then it wasn’t like any siren of Greek myth could ever have competed for him.

Over the last two hours, David’s attention had routinely slipped away from his book to focus on the fifteen or thirty seconds of song falling from his partner's tongue before he went silent again until the next song he knew. David was always careful not to jostle him or call attention to the fact he was listening, and therefore making Colby realize that he was singing aloud, but at one point Colby’s voice hadn’t gone quiet for nearly ten minutes and David had almost lost the battle with the overwhelming affection filling his chest and urging him to set his book aside and pull his partner closer so he could at least kiss the top of his head. He’d managed to push that urge down and settle with mildly tightening the arm wrapped under Colby’s arm and around his torso, gently rubbing his thumb over the crest of his hip bone. Touches like this were commonplace for them now and didn’t startle or disturb him. 

He wasn’t sure how long their space had been silent, only knowing it had been long enough that his ears had begun to listen to the rise and fall of his partner’s breath, tracking the soft sound as if that too were music. For David? Maybe it was. Some unknown time later words began to fill their small space again, quiet but strong, leaving Colby’s throat and filling David’s chest until he felt as if it could hold no small speck more of love. His eyes traced the lines of his book, but his mind barely registered the words as his partner’s voice pulled his lips into a lazy smile.

_This night is cold in the kingdom_  
_I can feel you fade away_  
_From the kitchen to the bathroom sink_  
_and your steps keep me awake_

It took David a bit to recognize it, the words slower than normal and the notes curling into intricate patterns beyond their original form, enchanting and beautiful in a way the artist could never have hoped to achieve.

_Don’t cut me out, throw me out, leave me here to waste_  
_I once was a man with dignity and grace_  
_Now I’m slipping through the cracks of your cold embrace_  
_So please, please…_  


His voice trailed off into near silence as the sustained and dancing note ended, then it gained strength once more.

_Could you find a way to let me down slowly?_  
_A little sympathy, I hope you can show me_  
_If you wanna go then I’ll be so lonely_  
_If you’re leaving…baby…let me down…slowly…_

His voice had faltered during the last line, nearly breaking as the words changed but holding, only to fall into a thicker silence than before. David didn’t think anything of it, the song wasn’t over, but Colby didn’t always sing the whole of the portion played over people’s art. He couldn’t ignore the raw, broken whining sound that rang from low to high in distress from Colby's throat as his partner dropped his phone and headphones to the bed and abruptly turned toward him, burying his face in David’s chest. The hand previously holding his phone now gripping tightly to the side of his shirt was painfully obvious as well.

David froze at the abrupt and seemingly random change, unwilling to move for fear of making whatever this was worse while his mind tried to trace the lines of memories from the last few moments, trying to find where the lines tangled into the knot of his partner’s distress. Colby wasn’t making noise anymore, but he wasn’t just lying there anymore either, the cords of his muscles setting tension through his body as he pressed his face into David’s chest hard enough, desperately enough, that it seemed he would push through David’s skin down through his bones to the space that cradled his heart.

He thought through the lines he’d heard Colby sing and struggled for a moment before he could remember the ones that should have followed. Pressure that had nothing to do with his partner’s attempt to share his body cinched around his heart. He didn’t want to be right, but outside a random thought or memory that had entered Colby’s mind, he couldn’t think what else it could be. The book he’d barely been reading fell from his hand, page number unimportant, and landed almost silently on the blankets. He couldn’t roll onto his side with the way they were intertwined, but he managed to shift his weight just enough so he was facing towards the other man, curling around him at least a little bit. The hand he’d been holding the novel with now cupped the back of his head, fingers threading gently through dirty blonde hair.

“Hey,” If his voice was any softer it would break but he wasn’t sure if a louder or firmer sound would worsen things. “What’s wrong Baby?”

Colby’s shoulder blades pulled towards one another as the muscles beneath his skin tensed further with his distress. A quiet, wounded sound reached David’s ears as he realized his partner wasn’t breathing properly, his exhales long and rough and inhales short and sharp. He thought he could feel wetness soaking through the thin material of his shirt, but he wasn’t sure of that yet. Carefully, he ducked his head down to press a kiss to Colby’s hair, ignoring the strain on the muscles of his neck as he rested there and murmured, “Talk to me Baby, please.”

Colby turned his head only far enough that he could speak without the sound being muffled, he might as well not have moved for how quiet and strained his voice sounded, but David could hear him all the same. “’s just…bad memories came up.”

David’s hand, still where it had been for the last few hours, moved from hip to side so he could gently press his fingers there in slow patterns. Sometimes the added sensation of pressure helped distract Colby’s chaotic mind and let him focus when he was upset or overwhelmed. “The Chinese Thing?” He murmured quietly. Colby’s breath caught and his head rocked side to side ever so slightly. “A-After, stuff that happened after.” God, he sounded like he’d swallowed sandpaper. “And…” He trailed off and after a moment David nudged him with a gentle hum, a silent prompt to say whatever it was. “…Stupid crap ‘bout what could have happened ‘cause of what...’cause the shit I did.” 

“ ’Bout us?” Colby nodded and pressed into David with more strength, more pain, desperately in need of comfort and pressure. David, knowing he wouldn’t be seen, squeezed his eyes shut and pushed away the sick feeling crawling up his throat as he tightened his hold. He knew Colby still carried a crushing load of guilt for the lying and the broken trust that, if they were honest, wasn’t his fault. Every agent, especially ones who had come from the military like them, knew that you didn’t have a choice when it came to your orders, no matter how much you wanted to twist them, break them, or find a loophole. In most aspects of life Colby had moved on, hell his guilt about Dwayne Carter’s death only reared its head near the man’s death day. But where David, and their relationship, was concerned guilt clung to him like poison vines, blooming into painful replays of memories from their – David’s – hostility when they were mending things, the thorns choking him with endless scenarios of ‘what if’. Whatever the paths of ‘what if’ took, they always ended in some variation of them not being together anymore, perhaps never forgiving each other at all. With David hating him. And David watched helplessly as it bent his beloved’s soul like Atlas carrying the weight of all the heavens.

He pressed another kiss to his best-friend’s head. “We’re here now, Colb. Wasn’t fun there for a bit, but none of that crap happened. I didn’t leave, you didn’t go to Washington, Don didn’t have to separate or transfer us. We got through it, Baby, we’re here and none of that shit happened. It’s okay.” He tried not to sound desperate with his need to remove the source of his lover’s pain, struggled to leave only calm and love and steadiness bleeding through his tone. Colby wasn’t the only one hurting here, but he was more important to David than his own feelings at the moment. “You’re not on your own Sweetheart, you’re home, you came home. We both did, and our family is still here: Don, Megan, Larry, Amita, Alan, Charlie – you have a soft spot for Charlie and Larry, for Alan and Ian too. Hell, our family grew, you got the annoying sister you didn’t want in Nikki, Liz too. You’re not on that ship or in that cell. You’re not alone anymore, _Mo Ghrá_ , you won’t be ever again.” 

Between his words he’d been pressing kisses wherever he could reach, combing his fingers through short, but longer than it had been, blonde hair, and tracing patterns into tan but still pale skin marked by scars. He could trace every one of them, had mapped them out with gentle hands and careful lips and tongue, knew the stories behind some, and knew only the pain behind others but not the cause. “Breathe for me, _A ghrá mo chroí._ ”

Colby had tilted his head up at some point, his chin hooked over David’s shoulder and his cheek pressing against his jaw as he struggled to even out his breaths. David pulled back from him the slightest bit, just enough to look down at him. Colby ducked his head immediately, but didn’t press his face into David’s chest again, merely rested his forehead against his collarbone. The hand in his hair curled around his back and the one on his side came up to gently hook bent fingers under Colby’s jaw, thumb pressing and gently rubbing over his chin. Carefully he put pressure there and urged but did not force Colby to raise his head. Bright eyes of swirling blue and green met deep brown and David didn’t let himself react to the sight of unshed tears clinging to Colby’s lashes like fallen stars. Instead, he smiled gently and softly murmured “There you are, _A chroí._ ” He took a moment to let them both breathe. “You with me Colbs?” 

A rattled but calm breath left the blonde man and his eyes slid almost shut as he pressed into the hand now cupping his cheek instead of holding his chin. He nodded, the movement small and tired but easily seen. David’s lips pulled up into a gentle smile, noticing some of the tension seeping from the other’s body as he carefully ran his thumb over his cheekbone and under his eye, gathering the few stray tears that had fallen. “You alright sweetheart?”

Colby sometimes rolled his eyes at David’s nicknames for him, hypocritically since he had at least a dozen more for David, but didn’t bother this time, just rested the weight of his head in David’s hand and tiredly answered. “Mmm. Just bad memories ‘n old nightmares and…” He broke off and almost prayed that David hadn’t noticed or wouldn’t ask, but he knew his partner better than that, and David knew him too well. “And what? What else Colb?” 

Colby had been absently staring at David’s cheek, barely even seeing it, but now his gaze pointedly slid away from his partner until he was looking down at the blankets. David never ceased to be gentle with him, was seldom rough even when he was angry, but somehow it felt a thousand times gentler and simultaneously rougher when he was trying to comfort him. The thumb gently running over his cheek and the quiet voice surrounding him made guilt and panic swell in Colby’s gut. He hated it, hated having this type of reaction to David’s gentle care and love. He didn’t even realize he was trembling until his own shaking arms caught the attention of his unfocused gaze.

“Colby? Talk to me, please love.” His partner’s concerned voice reached him through the haze, and that broke him, sorrow and misplaced pain overriding both guilt and panic as he ducked his head. “I-“ He swallowed past the shrapnel in his throat and tried again. “Its…Sometimes-“ He couldn’t spit it out. David just kept holding him and running patterns into his skin with light fingers. “It’s alright Colby, you can say it.” He wasn’t a hundred percent sure what the _‘it’_ was but he was afraid he knew. Colby let out a short, high whine as he just seemed to deflate, upper body tipping forward until his forehead was pressed against the bone of David’s shoulder. For a moment he went unnaturally still.

“Why are you here?” It was so pained, so broken, and so horribly calm that David wanted to cry. “I just…why didn’t you leave? I…I should know that you wouldn’t be here unless… but I can’t fucking stop… why haven’t you left yet? When-?” He stopped abruptly with a broken sound.

David wanted to cry, not for himself, but for his partner’s pain. He’d long since learned of the other man’s depression and his anxiety, and the abandonment issues that made David want to hurt someone for the actions they’d taken that sowed the seeds of pain and doubt that bloomed into a never-ending wait to be left behind. He knew about these and the guilt they wouldn’t let fade, about the crippling, lifelong fear of being alone, or worse, abandoned by the ones he loved that never truly stopped plaguing Colby. Sometimes they reared their heads, them and all the doubts and fears and guilt and uncertainty - all of them like a Hydra that had sprouted dozens of heads when well-meaning fools had cut the heads off with temporary care and forgotten that they had to cauterize the wound with long-term commitment and love lest the issue come back twice as bad. 

Usually, Colby didn’t doubt David, he was the one thing that almost always held him steady, the one certainty he knew wouldn’t crumble beneath him like an eroding ledge. But sometimes, sometimes pain and guilt and that little voice that said _**‘what if’**_ and _**‘why would someone care’**_ brought old trauma and old terrors to the surface, bringing to call the panic and sorrow like the sirens that dragged him under and filled his lungs until he drowned made him forget that certainty.

David turned his head and pressed a lingering kiss to Colby’s temple, shifting so he could hold him close. “ _A ghrá_. Baby, look at me.” The blonde turned his head towards him but didn’t raise his gaze, tucking his head under David’s chin instead. That was ok, facing him instead of turning away was progress at least. Trying to choose his words carefully David started carding his fingers through dirty-blonde hair, a simple thing that almost always calmed and comforted the man currently curled into his side. 

“Colby, sweetheart, is this your anxiety yelling in your head about your nightmares, or do you genuinely think I haven’t moved past what happened two years ago?” He tilted his head down and rested his forehead against Colby’s impossible to tame hair, swallowing thickly and working through the sudden pressure in his throat and the ache in his chest. “ _Baby_ … please tell me you don’t spend your life waiting for me to leave you?” It came out small, cracked on the first word, broken over love and pain, but he didn’t think he would have been able to hide how much the thought pained him. Colby ducked his head again, the arm he’d put over David’s stomach sometime in the last little bit tightening abruptly but not painfully. 

“I-I…” He took a deep breath and tried to ignore the words in his head that sounded so much like his voice but weren’t his, and the emotions he didn’t want currently strangling his heart. Twice, three times he breathed, then he forced himself to pull his legs under himself and straighten up until he was sitting on his knees, weight balanced on one outstretched palm while his other hand grasped desperately at the fabric covering his partner’s heart, his head hanging down with his eyes still closed. He was immediately cold, no longer pressed to David’s side, and he tried to ignore the shock of it as his body trembled. “I know you’re not going to…know you’re not playing a game with me, not using me or _m-manipulating_ me.” His voice caught on that word and they both knew why. “I know you’re not pretending, not just putting up with me…. I know you wouldn’t be cruel if you wanted to e-end it….” A harsh breath left his lungs too fast and almost became a frantic sob. “But I…I can’t make this stupid fear go away…and when something makes me think about the possibility of you leaving, or how damn close to that we were, it all just gets a thousand times worse and my mind goes through every possibility, everything that could go wrong, everything that did go wrong, every reason y-you shouldn’t be here – shouldn’t st-stay…and I can’t stop it, and it hurts and I…I just..” 

His words had been getting faster as he went and he finally broke off as they reached the point of being frantic, a choked sound ending his confession with silence as tears started to fall from tightly closed eyes. David, no longer weighed down nor pinned in place, sat up and pushed himself back so he could lean against the pillows while sitting up. Carefully he reached forward and maneuvered Colby until he was settled between his legs, side pressed to David’s chest and head tucked into the crook of his neck with David’s arms wrapped around him tightly. “Shh. It’s okay Baby, it’s gonna be alright.”

Colby clung to him and cried quietly, his harsh breaths, the convulsing of his chest, and the wetness falling onto David’s skin the only things making it obvious. David held him through it with gentle hands and soon was pressing gentle kisses wherever he could reach, uttering reassurances, calming words, and reminders of his love between each one as he rocked them gently back and forth.

He didn’t know how long it had taken until the shaking had given way to weary muscles almost unable to maintain their hold on him, until wracking convulsions gave way to shaky but regular breaths, until tears stop falling from eyes now too tired to stay open, and the tendrils of panic that had seeped into the air around them dissipated into the calm and exhaustion that followed extreme emotions.

David didn’t push him, didn’t try to make him speak or force him to move before he was ready. He just laid there with him and ran gentle hands across his back and careful fingers through his hair as Colby came back to himself. He listened as shallow breaths became deeper until the sound was joined by the feeling of ribs barely brushing across his own as his partner’s lungs filled fully for the first time in several minutes. Colby’s voice reached his ears from where lips brushed against the skin of his neck, quiet but steady, his words no longer marred by panic and crushing pain. 

“Sorry, _mo Cuishle._ ” David’s lips pulled into a smile that, should anyone have seen him, would have betrayed the weight of the love and devotion his heart held for the man in his arms. _‘Mo cuishle’_ – _“My pulse”_ , _**“The one who makes my heart beat”**_. It was an endearment, one among many they shared between them, that had fallen from Colby’s lips two years ago, a few weeks after their reunion as lovers, murmured without much thought in the kitchen they once again shared in the early morning light. He’d frozen like a deer in the headlights, flushing horribly and refusing to meet his partner’s eyes when David had repeated the then strange term, when he’d asked him what it’d meant. He’d told him the meaning with shy words as his eyes had traced the lines of the tiling beneath his feet. He’d lost his timidness when David had repeated it slowly, tracing the sounds with his tongue, when he’d remarked that it was an odd choice and asked why Colby would choose that of all things. He’d laughed then, the sound bright and beautiful and painfully rare in those days, making David’s heart sing while his partner had looked at him with rare confidence and a loving smile. Had pulled him close while he’d reminded him that David had kept his heart beating on that godforsaken freighter, that it had been David’s hands that commanded his heart to beat for far longer than any sane person would have attempted until the EMTs arrived. Had lost his embarrassment but not his bashfulness as he’d held him close, as those gentle hands once turned rough in desperation and fear and love found his heart again, resting over his ribs as if they could reach through his bones and cradle that pulsing organ between them. _“You set the rhythm of my heart, David. It wouldn’t be beating now if you hadn’t commanded it to.”_

Over the years that endearment had littered Colby’s speech almost more than any other, yet it was still few and far between and only uttered in the calm and quiet. It never failed to set a swelling ache of joy into David’s chest. He turned his head to brush his lips over Colby’s forehead softly. “For what? Anxiety over a life-long fear? Don’t apologize for that Baby.” 

“I shouldn’t doubt you…” He mumbled it into David’s shoulder and the other man suppressed a sigh “You’re not. You said as much. You know I love you, you know this is real, and you know I’m not going anywhere. Those things don’t negate your fear, but you’re not doubting me, Baby. It’d be okay if you were though-”

“No, it wouldn’t-!” David rolled them over carefully, until Colby was beneath him, the movement cutting Colby off and prompting him into silence. He held himself up on bent arms, framing his partner between them and looking down at him calmly, waiting until the hands that had instinctually grasped at the fabric over his chest loosened into a gentler grip and ocean eyes met his.

“Yes. It would Colby. It wouldn’t be ok if I didn’t try to take care of those doubts, but we’re not perfect _A Chroi_ , we’ve made mistakes and we’ll make mistakes again. You doubting me, for whatever reason, would be ok. It’s not good, but if something doesn’t feel right, if I’m not here as much as I should be, if I’m…neglecting you again…even if it turns out there wasn’t a reason for it at all –” He shook his head softly, breaking off that trail. “Listen to me: You are allowed to doubt me. -” Colby cut him off again, staring up at him with wounded eyes. “You don’t deserve that David.” 

David smiled sadly. “Maybe, maybe not. Know what you deserve? Someone who acknowledges that doubt, even if there might not be a logical reason for it. Someone who takes care of you, someone who does everything they can to prove that doubt wrong. Someone who will love you and take care of you and make sure you’re ok while you both work through whatever is causing the anxiety or the fear or the pain, rational or non-existent.” He smiled down at his partner sadly, sorrow etched into the lines of his being, knowing his next words were reflections of distant memories, not irrational maybes. “You don’t deserve someone getting angry with you because of how you feel, you don’t deserve to be pushed away or hurt because of anxiety and fears nearly as old as you are, you don’t deserve someone who would be offended by that doubt instead of worried about you and what’s making you feel that way. You don’t deserve someone who won’t help you through it when it gets to be too much.” 

He paused and bent his head down, resting his forehead against his partner’s shoulder. He’d been keeping his voice quiet and gentle, not for fear of upsetting Colby but in an effort to comfort him, even so, he couldn’t keep his own emotions from bleeding through. “You’re allowed to doubt me, Baby, just like you’re allowed to get angry with me, you’re allowed to be upset, clingy, anxious, whatever. It’s ok. I’m not always going to be the best partner, and I’m going to have bad days, but the day I ever see you upset or anxious or having a depressive episode or a panic attack or unsure of something, hell even unsure of me or our relationship, and I care more for how it affects me instead of taking care of you, instead of helping you through it: Leave. Please, please Baby leave.”

It’s quite for a heartbeat, two, three. There’s a gentle nudge to the side of his head, so he looks up and Colby kisses him chastely. The younger man pulled back, just a bit, hands cupping David’s jaw so he could smile up at him gently and murmur: “Guess it’s a good thing for my abandonment issues that you’re not going to become something like that.” David grinned and huffed a small laugh, repositioning his arms around his partner’s waist to hold him closer. “Pretty sure a solid half of my instincts and wants where you’re concerned all revolve solely around taking care of you in any way you’ll let me. So yeah, I may have bad days, may not always be the best partner in the worlds, hell might downright be a shitty one somedays, but no, I highly doubt I’m going to become like that.”

Colby grinned tiredly at him and David nudged their noses together, a motion equally likely to be done as an act of intimacy as teasing, it seemed to accomplish both here as a quiet laugh fell from the blonde. Often that would have devolved into mock-wrestling and joking bickering, and perhaps something more. David grinned but didn’t push it, he didn’t need the slightly dull eyes or the dead weight of Colby’s, well, everything, to know the other was exhausted. That tended to happen whenever his depression of anxiety severely acted up. He fell onto his side, Colby turned to face him without prompting and he wrapped his arms around him to hold him close. Weary arms not yet devoid of strength draped over his waist in return. David pressed a lingering kiss to Colby’s forehead and felt a gentle nudge to the underside of his jaw accompanied by a low hum in response. He knew Colby would need to rest, no matter whether or not he would sleep, and they had the time anyway, so they settled, as content now as they had been before.

Some people, if anyone was privy to their relationship and if their opinions mattered at all, might have thought doubt was a strange thing to allow, much less encourage, in a relationship. Truth was, David never wanted Colby to doubt him, and he tried to make sure there was never a reason to. This wasn’t because Colby was a controlling partner, it wasn’t because David wanted the constant fear surrounding his love, it wasn’t for any of the ridiculous reasons someone might have come up with. The truth of it was that David knew about Colby’s depression, his anxiety, his trauma, and the fears they liked to pull out of the dark to torment him. He understood that it was out of his Beloved’s control, he understood that his insecurities and fear, built on the experiences of people who had handled him too roughly and then thrown him away to shatter like glass on the pavement, would focus on David, his partner. And he knew those fears and anxieties and depressive episodes and mixed up emotions needed the space and safety to be expressed. Bottled up they exploded into a nightmare that swallowed and drowned Colby, but thankfully they were past that stage and now they simply crept up when no one was looking. What was David supposed to do when his partner’s mind was being assaulted by painful scenarios of his greatest fear? When he was having an anxiety attack about the mere thought of being abandoned **_again_**? Leave him alone? Fuck that. No, he’d do what he always did: Hold him and talk to him and soothe him, give him what he needed and what he wanted. He’d reassure him and make sure when he came back down from the overwhelming sensations that he felt secure and cared for and loved and safe.

**Author's Note:**

> Mo Ghrá – My love  
> A chroí – My heart  
> A ghrá mo chroí – My heart’s beloved  
> Mo Cuishle (pronounced ‘coosh-la’): Literally means ‘my pulse’, for the person who makes your heart beat.  
> (Disclaimer - I do not speak Irish)
> 
> If you would like to leave a Kudos or a comment (I do get around to answering all comments eventually), I would very much appreciate it<3 And as you can see, it sometimes has the result of a random fic that wasn't supposed to be up yet ;P.


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